7 months!

     I'm getting bad at keeping up with this, so there's going to be a lot of pictures in this post!

Sitting up by herself now!

All bundled up and ready for a dog walk!

     Ayla is now sitting up by herself, which is awesome! She can't get into or out of the sitting position by herself yet, but once she's in it, she can stay for 5 or 10 or 20 minutes. When she's on her tummy, she is on the move! Not crawling just yet, but definitely "scootching". She gets her legs going and uses her upper body strength to drag herself around. The nice thing about her not being able to get out of the sitting position yet (unless she happens to topple) is that I can have her on the ground with her toys and not have to worry about her ending up under the table or in the dog's food bowl or heading for the couch... she's getting pretty speedy and Chris and I are already planning on purchasing more baby gates for the stairs and a play pen for when she's crawling.

Blurry, but smiley!

She likes to scootch over to the toy box and pull out all of her toys

     We celebrated Thanksgiving with Chris' family in Oregon City this year at his mom's house. Carl came up from Corvallis, great grandpa Eugene, Nancy and Gary (Chris' aunt and uncle), Coby, Riley and Rick (Chris' cousins' kids and husband). My two goals for the day were to eat and sleep and I accomplished both. It was glorious :)

Me and my brother-in-law, Carl. We make a good T-day nap team.

 

      We were able to meet up with Chris' dad for dinner a few weeks ago, too (but we forgot to take pictures... sheesh!). We're hoping to get together again soon. Dinner was good (Henry's Tavern in NW Portland) and Ayla acquired a new outfit (the jacket in her toy box photo above was part of the outfit).

     My dad was home for a few days, so Ayla and I were able to spend a little time with him, too (he drives semi trucks and is away for weeks/months at a time). He brought Cupcake a cute hat that she has plenty of time to grow into:

Baldies!

          Cupcake's been enjoying lots of new foods. She still really likes bananas and sweet potato, but she also really likes avocado. She's also tried pear, apples, applesauce, butternut squash and carrots. We still  need to try peas. Chris and I are still buying the fruit/veggies fresh, pureeing them up and freezing them in ice cube trays. It's been working really well and is cheap! It's easy to pull one or two cubes out of the freezer and then let them defrost or stick 'em in the microwave for a few seconds. In addition to breastmilk (her main staple still), she gets foods 1-3 times a day depending on what we're doing that day. She seems to really enjoy it!

      Chris and I went to Bend for our 1-year anniversary/5-year wedding anniversary, but I'll post that in a separate blog since this post is getting so long!

6 months old!

     Baby Ayla Cupcake is 6 months old!

CC and I found this book at the library and had to promptly purchase it at Powell's the next day!

    We started trying solids just a couple weeks ago. She was helping me make pumpkin cupcakes one day, so I gave her a little bit of the canned pumpkin. She was way more tired than I thought, because she ended up passing out within about a minute of trying the pumpkin (resulting in the following pictures):

Droopy head

Even slept through me holding her head up and then taking her out of the wrap!

Who wants banana when you've got rainbow pants?

        The next food we tried was banana. I mashed up just a little and she wasn't very interested (at least, not in the banana). Chris bought some small Gerber baby food containers a few days later (banana and peaches), so we tried the banana and she seemed to like it. The next day, she was grabbing for the spoon with both hands and leaning forward with her open baby bird mouth! She only had a few teaspoons, but seemed to really enjoy smearing it around her face and getting it on her hands. We tried peaches a few days later, but every time I gave it to her, she'd make a slightly disgusted looking face. I told her that I wouldn't want to eat something that smelled like feet, either. Just a few days ago, I cut up, baked and pureed a sweet potato that she seemed to really enjoy. On day two of the sweet potato project, she was leaning forward and grabbing for the spoon again! I think the next food we'll try will be avocado. Should be pretty easy to scoop out and puree up. I'm definitely more interested in keeping with fresh fruits and vegetables instead of buying the pre-made baby food. It's pretty easy at this point and a lot cheaper. I think we bought the sweet potato for less than a dollar and got about 12 cubes out of it (after you puree it, you can freeze it in an ice cube tray then pop out each cube and keep them frozen in a bag until you're ready to use one). I think 2 cubes fit in a baby food container and each one of those is about $0.50. I'd much rather pay the $1 for one sweet potato as opposed to $6 for the equivalent in pre-made food (not to mention much less plastic to have to re-use or re-cycle).

I found her sleeping like this one day... beautiful little weirdo!

     On Sunday, Cupcake participated in her first 5k! Chris ran this one as well and we met up with Will and Caroline. Chris' mom showed up to support us and take pictures (and get some Cupcake snuggles while we enjoyed the post-race food and entertainment). It was a good run, no rain and lots of costumes to look at. Ayla made it to about the one mile mark (right by the water birth center!) before getting bored (or overwhelmed) and falling asleep. Chris pushed her in the jogging stroller for the first 3/4 of a mile and I pushed her the rest of the way. We crossed the finish line at 35:31 (my second fastest run of the four 5ks I've done these last few months). Not too shabby.

Cupcake dressed as a cupcake!

She was fascinated with grandma's earrings

"Grandma, where did you buy these?"

"Can I get some mama, please??"

Caroline, Will, Mama, Cupcake, Chris

First family 5k... high five!

We went over to Voo Doo Doughnuts after the race and had to take a picture for our 1-year wedding anniversary!

    And some pictures from a playdate with Omi and Icen a few weeks ago at the Children's Museum:

On the sweet water bed!

Icen is crawling around and getting into things!

He liked the scarves (or whatever they were)

Water bed again

Water bed and bead toy

Wobble warning! Icen is too speedy to be captured on film.

Making his way over to Ayla

Making his way over to my cell phone. That kid is addicted!

Pumpkin fest!

     Ayla had her 6-month check up at the pediatrician's office yesterday. She now weighs 13 pounds and 15 ounces (almost double her birth weight! Only half a pound away) and is 24 1/2 inches long (she's grown 5 inches since her birth day). She's in the 25th percentile for both height and weight, but has shown consistent growth at every visit.

She loves watching the fish tank!

 

 

 

       Chris, Ayla and I went to the Wooden Shoe Pumpkin Fest in Woodburn after her appointment yesterday. It was weird to be back there when just 6 months ago, we were there on Ayla's birth day (I was in labor). We didn't do as much walking (no tulip fields and it was getting too dark/cold to do the corn maize), but got some good pictures!

Floppy hood

That's better!

Pirate ship and pirates

Pumpkin face

Dorky mama (with CC still strapped on my chest)

Dorky daddy

Pumpkins!

Chris setting up the "photo shoot"

Look at that face! Love that little baby!

"Hmmmm, what's this?"

"Hey, what's that?"

"Dad, prop me up!"

I'm not sure what this face is... maybe wet butt from the muddy grass?

"Whoa! That's a big pumpkin!"

"There's a reason that big pumpkin was sitting to my left before... whoa!"

"I'm okay!"

Yeah!

Socks came off when she was "walking" in the grass

"Whoa, dad!"

"Ewwww, gross!! Is that supposed to be horse hair?"

Teeter toter!

Inside a little play house

Inside the pumpkin wagon

So happy!